


Stay

by swallowthewhale



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-16 18:06:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11834151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swallowthewhale/pseuds/swallowthewhale
Summary: Cisco is dating Cynthia, but Caitlin doesn't know that when she tells him she's in love with him.An alternate ending to "combat boots and leaving"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shipsfordays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shipsfordays/gifts).



“Nothing’s wrong.” She wrings her hands in her lap and he covers them with his own.

“Okay,” he says slowly. “What do you need to tell me?”

Caitlin takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and puts every ounce of steel, ice, and bravery into saying, “I’m in love with you, Cisco.”

Cisco’s hands tighten on hers but he doesn’t say anything, and when she peeks, he’s gaping at her, stricken.

Fighting back the sob rising in her throat, Caitlin tugs her hands back uselessly. “Forget it,” she says, horrified to hear her voice thick with tears.

Cisco stares at her for another infinite moment, then oh, so very slowly slides his hands off hers.

Caitlin wraps her arms around her stomach and hunches over, letting her hair swing in front of her face so she doesn’t have to look at his sad eyes and pitying face.

“I’m seeing Cynthia,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, Caitlin.”

She tries to concentrate on breathing, in and out, but there’s a thick knot in her throat, and she can only gasp for air.

“I should go.” He stands up and Caitlin thinks he’s gone until he sets down a glass of water and her bottle of prescription migraine medication. She always gets headaches when she cries.

But she waits until after he rests a tentative hand on her shoulder, puts his shoes back on, and closes the door behind him to let the tears out. Then she cries until she’s wheezing, until her lungs ache for air, and she falls asleep curled up tight in the corner of her couch.

When she wakes up, Iris is sitting in an armchair, backlit by the soft glow of the kitchen light. She’s reading Caitlin’s half-finished pros and cons list.

Caitlin struggles to sit up.

“Cisco called me,” Iris says. “Apparently I gave really shitty advice.”

“Yeah,” Caitlin croaks, throat dry. She swallows two pills down with half the glass of water. “But I didn’t have to listen.”

Iris switches on the lamp next to her chair. Her face is a mix of sympathy and poorly concealed indignation. “I brought ice cream, hot chocolate, and wine. Any preference?”

“Ice cream,” Caitlin says. She hasn’t had anything so cold since her powers had activated and every moment felt like frost creeping into her bones. But tonight she wants to feel numb.

Caitlin had forgotten, though, that losing her best friend didn’t necessarily mean she’d be alone again. Maybe it will be okay.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s not okay.

Caitlin could deal with a semblance of normalcy, she could pretend that nothing had happened and act like everything was fine. Except Cisco is avoiding her, and that maybe hurts more than the rejection.

At the height of her embarrassment and distress, she had thought she’d lost Cisco. But in the light of the morning and after half a pint of ice cream and a long talk with Iris, she figured there would be some awkwardness that they would eventually move past and go back to being best friends.

That can’t happen if Cisco’s avoiding her. He always has an excuse to leave the room if they end up alone, he can barely look at her, and when Caitlin goes out with Barry or Wally to take a criminal down, he avoids directly addressing her at all costs.

“I don’t know what to do,” Caitlin confesses to Iris at one of their now weekly girl nights. “I just want to talk to him. I miss him.”

Iris sips her wine, considering. “I think he misses you, too. But maybe you just need to give him some time?”

Caitlin fiddles with her own wine glass. “It’s been a week,” she mutters.

Iris sighs. “Or maybe he thinks he needs to give you time. Why don’t you just call him? Or corner him at Star Labs and ask to talk?”

“Do you think he’s said anything to Barry?” Caitlin asks hopefully.

Iris glares. “Don’t use Barry as a go-between. You’re both adults, and you’ve been through worse than this. Just talk to him.”

Caitlin stares at the ceiling. “But what do I say?”

Iris gets up and hands her a pad of paper. “Exactly what you said to me. You can write it down so you don’t forget.”

By midnight, Caitlin has five handwritten pages of rambling, semi-incoherent thoughts. She folds them up and slips them into her purse, then lies awake for another hour agonizing over how to talk to Cisco. She’s never been this nervous about talking to anyone, not even the first time she met Ronnie, when she’d been starstruck and shy and so young.

She finally decides to leave him a note, just as she’s drifting off to sleep. That way he can answer when he’s ready.

Caitlin whimps out as soon as she walks into the cortex and Cisco and Wally’s laughter dies off. Wally gives her a bright grin, but Cisco disappears right away. She abandons her plan. She can’t do it.

“Hey, Caitlin,” Wally says, and she gives him a wan smile. “You okay?”

She presses her fingernails into her palm. “I’m fine,” she says tightly. “How are your new shoes holding up? You’ve been using them a lot this past week.”

Wally gracefully accepts the change in conversation, but sends her worried frowns every time he thinks she isn’t looking.

He zips out for school by 9:30, though, and the cortex is blissfully quiet in the mornings without anyone else there. She reads over her pages from last night again and again, and every time convinces herself more that saying something to Cisco is a terrible idea.

She’s hunched over them, for the fifth time, hand pressed tight against her mouth so she doesn’t cry, when Cisco walks in.

“Oh,” he says, frozen in the doorway.

Caitlin looks up, her eyes still watery, and hastily tucks the papers under the desk.

“Sorry,” he says awkwardly, backing away. “I was just looking for Iris. We were going to have lunch.”

“Wait,” Caitlin says, standing suddenly. “Cisco, I…”

He stops, and his normally open face is closed-off and distant.

“I’m sorry,” Caitlin whispers, tears burning in her throat. She drops the papers and stumbles over her chair as she hurries away, shoulders shaking as she presses dry, heaving sobs into her hand.

This was a terrible idea.


	3. Chapter 3

Caitlin takes a week off work, tells Iris and Barry to tell Cisco that she’ll have her phone if there’s an emergency, and makes an appointment with her therapist.

She sees her therapist, she goes to the park and meditates, she gets a massage at the spa, and she goes out into the woods to practice using her powers. She breathes, and she doesn’t cry, and she misses Cisco as much as she did when he was standing five feet away and ignoring her.

On Friday, Caitlin is laying on her couch in stretchy yoga pants and a Star Labs sweatshirt watching  _ What Not to Wear _ when there’s a knock at the door. She stares at the wall for a moment, considering if she wants to answer, when she remembers Iris offering to bring a movie and wine. It’s not Iris in the peephole, though, it’s Cisco, hands shoved deep in his pockets, hair pulled back into a messy bun, and dark circles under his eyes.

He looks up when she opens the door. “Hey,” he says, and Caitlin silently steps aside to let him in. He walks in far enough for her to close the door, then leans against the wall in the hallway.

“Is everything okay?” Caitlin asks, forcing herself to put her hands in her pockets instead of wrapping them around her stomach.

“No,” Cisco says pitifully. “I miss you, Cait.”

Caitlin flinches, and he must notice the cold expression sweep across her face, because he curls up into himself further.

“I know I was being a jerk, ignoring you, but I didn’t know what to say.” He sighs. “I could always cheer you up when you were upset, but how could I do that when I’m the one who upset you?”

Caitlin grips her hands inside the kangaroo pouch of the sweatshirt. “You told the truth,” she says stiffly. “That’s not your fault.”

He rubs his hand over his face, groaning. “No, I know. It’s just, I’m never that guy. I know I talk a mean game, but I’m never the one that people like you fall in love with. You were meant to be with someone like Ronnie.” He finally looks up at her. “People as amazing as you never fall for someone like me.”

Caitlin can only stare, her heart thudding in her chest.

Cisco sighs. “Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for acting like an ass, and whenever you’re ready to talk and try to go back to being best friends, I’ll be here.” He fishes a bundle of folded papers out of his pocket. “And you left these at Star Labs. I figured you wouldn’t want anyone reading them.”

She flashes hot, then cold, as her heart leaps into her throat. “Did you read them?”

Cisco blushes. “Only enough to figure out what they were about. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy.”

Caitlin gingerly takes the papers, tucking them into her pocket. “Can we just forget about all of this and go back to the way it was before?”

He leans back against the wall with a thud. “We can try,” he says. “But is that really what you want?”

“Yes,” she says immediately, then thinks about it. “I don’t know. I don’t want you to ignore me. I want be able to work in the same room as you again, and I want to have movie nights again. I just want you back.”

Cisco opens his arms and she only hesitates for a second before stepping into them. “We’ll figure it out,” he whispers into her hair. “I’m not going to let you go again.”


	4. Chapter 4

Caitlin is really good at pretending. She shuts her emotions off at Star Labs and acts exactly the way she did before, she grits her teeth through Cisco and Cynthia’s ups and downs, and she sees her therapist religiously, whose sage advice often involves things like keeping a journal, spending more time with other friends, and being honest with Cisco about how his actions affect her. Caitlin does all these things with a grimace, and pins the five pages she wrote six months ago above her desk so she’ll never forget how telling your best friend that you’re in love with them is a terrible idea.

Then Cisco and Cynthia break up.

Cisco frowns at the video game on the TV screen in concentration while Barry and Wally egg each other on from the couch.

Iris leans over the kitchen table to whisper to Caitlin, “Have you asked him yet?”

Caitlin glares and pops the cork out of the wine bottle with more force than strictly necessary. “I don’t see the point,” she hisses back. “He already knows how I feel.”

Iris walks around to pour herself a glass. “But then you’ll know why they broke up. Maybe he’s the one who broke things off.”

Caitlin raises an eyebrow. “We were both there when he was falling over himself flirting with her, and we were both there a month ago when he kept chasing after her every time she got upset. We’ve been watching them break up for months, and it’s pretty clear who ended it.”

Iris just looks at her over the rim of her glass.

And Caitlin scowls, because she knows Iris is right. She wants to know why they broke up, even if it’s just to dig the knife in a little further.

So she waits until Barry and Wally are hungry enough to go raid Joe’s kitchen for food, and Iris gives her a wink and a little wave as she closes Cisco’s door behind them.

Caitlin rolls her neck out, takes a deep breath, and joins Cisco where he’s loading plates into the dishwasher.

“Can I ask you something?” she asks before she loses her nerve.

Cisco looks at her quizzically, but doesn’t pause.

“Why did you and Cynthia break up?” Caitlin says in a rush.

Cisco fumbles the plate he was holding and quickly sets it down on the counter. He rubs his hands on his pants nervously. “Um, why do you ask?”

Halfway through trying to come up with a good reason, she changes her mind. She definitely doesn’t want to know. “Nevermind,” she says, quickly grabbing the wine glasses and letting her hair hide her face as she carefully sets them in the dishwasher. “It was stupid.”

Cisco rests his hands on hers and she freezes. “Nothing you say is stupid, Cait,” he says seriously. “It’s just- we never talked about Cynthia before.”

She sighs, slips her hands out from under his, and continues stacking glasses. “I just wanted to know. And I want you to feel like you can talk to be about your relationships. You always did before.”

“She thought I was in love with you,” Cisco says abruptly and Caitlin actually does drop a plate. It clatters dully against the plastic rack.

“What?” Caitlin asks faintly, certain she heard that wrong.

Cisco busies himself with piling the empty takeout containers on the counter. “She wasn’t mad, she just said that she wasn’t my future.”

Caitlin sits at the table with a thud. “What are you saying, Cisco?”

He stills, then says to the wall, “I’m saying that maybe she’s right.”

Caitlin breathes into her cupped hands until she’s certain she can speak without crying. “I don’t think I can handle a maybe, Cisco,” she says very evenly, pressing her hands between her knees.

“I know,” he says, sitting next to her. “I need some time, to move on from Cynthia and figure out what I want.” He glances up, face begging her to understand.

She offers a shaky smile. “Well, I’ve waited this long.”

Cisco’s shoulders relax and he offers her a hand. “I’m not going anywhere, though,” he says quietly.

Caitlin grips his hand hard. “I know. This is home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it took so long to get this out! I had a lot of trouble figuring out a good ending. I hope you like it!
> 
> I'm @swallowthewhale on tumblr if you want to say hi!


End file.
